Newly Refurbished Basement

“Night Fever” plays on my father’s old stereo. We sit in a boy/girl/boy/girl circle. I spin an empty 7-Up bottle. Land on Mike Green, my Hebrew-school crush. Friends with Farah Fawcett layers and budding breasts titter. Mike opens closet. We enter blackness. “Want to kiss?” he asks. I scram.

Jen Lang is a California transplant in Tel Aviv, whose prize-winning essays appear in various journals and whose memoir Places We Left Behind, will be published by Vine Leaves Press, 2023. Facebook @israelwritersstudio